In TurnKey 11, instead of installing the root filesystem directly to a fixed size partition, we setup LVM by default, and install the root filesystem to a Logical Volume, which may later be expanded, even across multiple physical devices.

Unfortunately, as with anything powerful, to get the most out of LVM you first have to negotiate a learning curve. From the feedback we’ve been getting it seems that confusion regarding LVM is common with new users, so here’s a quick „crash course“…

We can only extend a Logical Volume within the free space of the underlyingVolume Group. How much free space we currently have within the Volume Group can be seen in this part of the output:

Free PE / Size 165 / 660.00 MiB

In the above example we only have 660 MB to allocate to LVMs within theturnkeyVolume Group. So if we want to extend the root LV we’ll have to first extend the VG backs it up.

Volume Groups group together Physical Volumes. That’s why they’re called Volume Groups. This command will show us which Physical Volumes have been registered into LVM, and to which volume groups they have been assigned:

In this example we only have one Physical Volume (the /dev/sda2 partition) in theturnkeyVolume Group.

Extending a Logical Volume

Bottom line: if the underlying Volume Group doesn’t have enough free space, to extend the Logical Volume you’ll first have to extend the underlying Volume Groupby adding another Physical Volume to it.

In VMWare you could either create a new virtual hard disk device to add to the volume group, or extend an existing virtual hard disk device, create a new partition with cfdisk, and add the new partition to the Volume Group: